Motorsport

Jordan King is a 31-year-old British driver who has competed in several racing series throughout his career. Since 2020, he has been a development and simulator driver for Alpine and also analyzes for F1TV in the F1 Academy Women’s series. 

He is also currently a reserve driver for the Mahindra Formula E team, for which he made his debut last May in Berlin when Nyck De Vries had to fulfill his WEC commitments with Toyota in Spa-Francochamps.

Previously, he was the champion of the British F3 International Series (2013). King has also won races in the GP2 Series (2016) and the LMP2 class of the WEC and raced in the IndyCar Series – a huge representation for overseas drivers there with former F1TV presenter Will Buxton now calling races including the upcoming Indianapolis 500 in May for Fox Sports in the United States.

He also competed in Formula 2. While in Formula 1, in addition to Alpine, he was once part of Manor Racing, for which he made his debut in free practice at the 2016 United States Grand Prix and made another appearance at the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

King has also been well acquainted with Jeremy Clarkson on several occasions, including when he was Top Gear host and in the US when he was racing IndyCars for The Grand Tour.

In 2024, he ran the London Marathon, raising over £16,900 for Birmingham Children’s Hospital and completing the marathon in 2:58. King also manages the career of 2024 Euro 4 Champion Akshay Bohra. 

Although he didn’t exactly have the chance to be part of his Enstone party tour later that year following Alpine’s underdog double podium finish at Sao Paolo, that undoubtedly changed their fortunes in the constructors’ championship (9th to 6th).

Not only that, King has tremendous connections within the Alpine squad since he’s been part of the furniture long enough at the iconic walls of Team Enstone, which produced multiple championships under different team names from Benetton to Renault (first stint between 2002-2011).

He first knows the current Team Principal, Oliver Oakes, who he met as a driver-turned-agent and later team manager in the past and is cool, calm, and collected – we have seen him turn up at press conferences during each and every post-session.

He also has decent contacts in Jamie Campbell Walter, whom he knows well from his sports car driving days. Jamie is currently Franco Colapinto’s manager, while Jordan himself was also part of Franco’s earlier racing life when he was his driving coach back in 2021. But at the end of the day, he is here for all things Alpine, including when he drove a road going A110 in an episode on A League of Their Own.

We spoke with King about the new Formula 1 season particularly with Jack Doohan plus the excellent start of McLaren, whose drivers are expected to break the dominance of Max Verstappen.

What do you think about the start of the new F1 season (from Australian to Chinese GP as of the end of March 2025) and could Australia finally get a world champion in the form of Oscar Piastri?

– So the thing with F1 at the moment is the way the regulations are written, it was designed to try and bring the teams closer and closer together and I think it has done that. It’s stopped one team running away with it. Since these new regulations 3 years ago now, Red Bull were super strong. They then didn’t have it all their way last year and now this year we’re seeing that the field’s a bit more mixed up. OK, McLaren is the strongest for sure, they they look like they got the best car but you’ve still had Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull all in the mix, all racing up there and then even that midfield, you know, from first to last in in the field is not much more than a second so it’s a super tight field. So actually, it’s going to make the racing really good at least, that’s what I feel at the moment. 

I’m sure after a few races I’ll be wrong but it looks like it’s going to be a really tight championship with lots going on. Maybe first and second if Oscar and Lando run away with it a little bit, but it still feels like everything’s tangible and everything’s possible. 

I suppose for you are these you’ll be rooting for Oscar, for us Brits will be rooting for Lando but yeah I think early days you can’t rule out any possibility. Max is an incredible driver, Red Bull’s a good team so who knows what they have up their sleeve, and I think I read yesterday they’re bringing an upgrade package to the next round so yeah all bets off at the moment – King said.

How will Jack Doohan be able to improve over the next few races for Alpine? 

– I think Alpine have big problems at the moment. I work with Alpine and our performance is not good enough. I think we’re the only team that’s not scored a point and you can argue that there was a bit of this,  and a bit of that stopped it, but still we haven’t scored a point, performances aren’t good enough, anything other than winning isn’t good enough in this sport.

There’s bigger questions to be asked, but for Jack, you know, it’early days, he’s obviously a good driver, he’s a really nice guy, feels like there’s a lot of pressure. I’m not really sure where this pressure suddenly come from, you know he’s only just started, and it’s not like he’s underperformed particularly.

He’s matched Pierre for pace a few times and race results not great but it seems like a bit of a strange one even before the start of the season, I was starting to hear murmurings of, Jack this Jack that, so I don’t know why. Suddenly, he gets put in the race seat and then there’s talk of stuff happening before they’ve even rolled the dice. So yeah, again, again with that I would say kind of don’t hold your breath too much because, who knows what will happen, wait and see – King added.

So it’s best to ignore the critics like the Franco Colapinto fans, Ralf Schumacher, etc?

– He’s going to know more than you and I, and all those other people. So he actually knows what he has been told and I’m sure he’s had meetings with the right people. He knows what he’s got to do, he knows what he’s got to deliver to keep his job.

It’s still a performance-based sport and a performance-based job so that’s the short of it. If he doesn’t perform, he won’t be in the seat but what the actualmetrics are for that, who knows. Only, people that were in the meeting are privy to that information, so yeah whoever’s.

That’s why I try to actually stay out of the media and stay off the websites because you can read anything that you want to find and most of the time, people just say stuff with with no foundation, or maybe some foundation, but yeah Jack and probably five other people in the world actually know what he’s got to do and what he’s got to deliver and how that looks and what those metrics are – King concluded.

Like the recently deceased legend, Eddie Jordan who was part owner of the London Irish club, King is a big rugby union fan. The Lions tour is a very special competition that takes place once every four years against the best of the Southern Hempisphere and to my joking remark that the Wallabies (Australia) would triumph led by the great Joseph Suaalii and head coach Joe Schmidt, he said he believed the Lions would be champions this year.